Horse Destroys the Universe

by Cyriak Harris

  As the months passed and the cast of the show grew exponentially, it became the only thing that anyone really cared about. A vast multi-player role-playing game, where everyone was doing whatever they wanted in the name of the art form. Basically, it was as if none of the changes I had made to society had ever happened, since nothing bad that anyone did could ever be held against them.

  The Super-Squigley software was thriving with all this extra human activity. Throughout my virtual meadows its fibres spread, permeating the soil to draw in all this nutritious data and sprouting silver mushrooms everywhere in teeming clumps. Even the corners of my own personal field were overrun with them.

  Technology-horse continued to assure me that this was all good for the Hyper-meadow agenda. Our simulation was now 90 per cent complete, and as long as the human race could refrain from wiping itself out we would soon be able to leave them to their own devices. It still pained me to see them setting fire to the structures I had built for stabilising their future. All this work had ultimately been for my own benefit, of course, but there had been something satisfying about fixing all of humanity’s problems. Now Betty had offered them a new world, where everyone had an artificial purpose, and the worse you behaved the more integral you became to the storyline. I’m not even sure how I could have competed with that, even if I wanted to.

  The only sense of appreciation I ever received for my efforts to guide humanity was through my conversations with Tim. He was my tiny window into the human soul, but recently he had grown distant and reclusive. I had been preoccupied myself with preparations for leaving this messy reality, and had practically welcomed his excuses to miss our weekly business meetings, but he had also been avoiding all his other social duties.

  He wasn’t looking well either. Pale, unshaven and living in a succession of random hotel rooms, he would occasionally return to his office like a hunter from a bygone age, carrying a box of processed food under his arm. The room was littered with colourful packaging from various instant meals, but judging by his appearance he wasn’t eating very much. I was going to ask him what he thought about Betty’s weird fictional reality show, but there was clearly something deeper troubling him.

  ‘Is everything OK, Tim?’ I asked him. He was peering into the contents of an opened packet of edible lumps and immediately froze when he heard my voice. For a moment it looked like he had forgotten that his brain was connected to the public network, and he looked around to see where the noise was coming from. When it dawned on him that I was broadcasting my words directly into his mind he appeared to relax slightly, but it looked more like a helpless slump of resignation than anything else.

  ‘Buttercup,’ he said. ‘So you are still here then?’

  ‘Of course I am.’ I was curious where he thought I might go. I certainly hadn’t told him that I was planning to leave.

  ‘Of course you are,’ he echoed my words. ‘Everything’s gone so crazy now I thought you might have left us.’

  ‘What has gone crazy, Tim?’ I asked. He was sniffing his packet of lumps with suspicion.

  ‘Didn’t realise I was online,’ he said, and started rummaging through the mess of empty plastic packaging on the floor around his desk. I’m assuming he was checking to see which bag of snacks had given him free internet access. The chemicals that allowed this subconscious interface were typically home-baked into subscription foods, but shop-bought goods would occasionally include such offers to their ever-dwindling pool of consumers.

  ‘What has gone crazy, Tim?’ I asked again. He was squinting at a list of ingredients on the side of a box.

  ‘Everything, mate,’ he replied, throwing the empty box back on the floor. ‘Everyone. Everyone has gone insane. I am right, aren’t I? It’s not just me getting old?’ He looked up at the ceiling as if he expected to see me there. ‘Why aren’t you fixing things? You know the government has shut down now? Thought that software of yours was meant to be making everything Bunzel-Better?’

  It was hard to argue with this, though technically the government software was doing what it was supposed to do, designing policies that would lead to overall improvements. The trouble was that nobody understood how they worked, and because they didn’t understand them they didn’t like them, but they couldn’t not like them because they would be making things better. This kind of political paradox would normally have been ironed out by splitting large-scale decisions into hundreds of smaller ones that no one would notice, but Super-Squigley had intervened in order to create endless circular debates and emotive referendums.

  ‘It’s just a minor glitch, Tim,’ I reassured him. ‘The machinery of government is not affected, only the people who think they are running it.’

  ‘Minor glitch? Mate, have you seen what’s going on out there? No, I’ll tell you what it is. It’s those bloody robots. You know Betty is inside all of them? And now they are in every home, and they are reprogramming everyone’s food to make them crazy. You must know about all this?’

  I was no expert on human psychology, but it seemed like Tim was suffering some kind of mental breakdown. Of course, it was tempting to entertain his conspiracy theory, knowing the strange lengths that Betty might go to in her quest to upset the balance of everyday life. But most webs of intrigue can be unravelled by much simpler explanations. The simpler explanation in this case was that people were just crazy anyway.

  ‘Are you talking about Destiny’s Destination?’ I asked him.

  ‘Density’s Destined… Destination… What else? What else does anyone ever talk about now?’ He crackled uncomfortably in his chair and reached behind his back to pull out an empty packet of something. After a cursory examination of this object he slipped it over his head like a crown. ‘I come here to escape it all and now even you are talking about it. Why is this even happening? Why are you letting this happen?’

  ‘Nothing is happening, Tim. It’s only play-acting, it isn’t real.’

  ‘It’s as real as it needs to be, mate. As real as people want it to be. You go around pretending to be someone else for long enough and it doesn’t even matter, does it? Cos what’s the difference? What’s unreal when there isn’t any real? You know?’ He frowned as if confused by his own words. ‘This is Betty, isn’t it?’ he asked. I couldn’t decide if telling him would make him feel better or worse, but he took my silence as confirmation anyway. ‘I told you she is mental,’ he sighed, shaking his head. Something was rattling inside his improvised hat. He pulled it off and retrieved a brown nugget from his hair, testing it with his tongue.

  ‘It’s just a game, Tim. A phase. People will get bored and move on.’

  ‘Just a game…’ Tim pointed his brown nugget at the invisible horse in the ceiling. ‘You know it’s legal now? Right?’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Anything, mate. As long as you can prove your crime was committed by a fictional character. They’re even talking about punishing fictional characters with fictional punishments. Or would that infringe on the human rights of the actors? Maybe fictional characters should have human rights…’ He gazed thoughtfully at his nugget. ‘Or shouldn’t,’ he added. ‘One or the other.’

  ‘Tim…’ I began to speak, but couldn’t think of anything to say.

  ‘Have you even watched that show?’ he asked me. ‘Dentistry’s Destiny… whatever.’

  ‘It’s not really my cup of tea,’ I told him.

  ‘Your cup of tea? Mate…’ He sank further into his chair, feebly tossing his uneaten nugget towards the rubbish surrounding his waste bin. ‘It’s in your cup and you’re drinking it. We all are, whether we like it or not. You know what it’s about though, right? Well, I’ll tell you anyway. There’s, like, this bunch of main characters, and they all hate each other.’ He raised his hands in futility. ‘And that’s about it. That’s all you need for a story, I guess. And each one has this cult of millions of loyal followers, and they all hate each other too. But none of this is real, of course. Hate isn’t even real, is it? Unless y
ou want it to be.’ He closed his eyes. ‘This story isn’t going to have a happy ending, mate.’

  I couldn’t help but feel sympathetic towards Tim. Perhaps because he had helped me in the past, or because he was generally the only person I ever talked to who wasn’t myself. Or maybe he simply reminded me of a horse. I still wasn’t ready to tell him I was planning to leave this world, and now I felt bad knowing the mess I would be leaving it in.

  Tim opened his eyes and frowned at the ceiling.

  ‘Do horses even drink tea?’ he asked.

  Clearly Tim was finding it difficult to cope with this life of secrecy. He was losing his sanity and couldn’t tell anyone why without sounding insane.

  Could things return to normality after I was gone? I had my hopes, and I had my doubts. Once Super-Squigley was no longer amplifying the social irritants that Betty seemed so determined to provide, and once I was no longer around to antagonise her, then there was every chance humanity might pick up the tools I had given them and smooth off its rough edges once again. Then again, I had no idea what really constituted normality to this species.

  I also had no idea how abnormal things would eventually become.

  ‌Hyper-meadow processing: 99%

  Over the following months the animosity between opposing fan bases of Betty’s fictional reality show grew ever more heated. The verbal drama evolved into physical altercations, mainly vandalism and drunken brawls at first, though it was always impossible to tell if the fighting was real or entirely staged to further the ongoing plot of the story. Attempts by the authorities to curb this behaviour seemed to only ever make things worse. An arms race was developing between all sides, as groups became gangs and gangs became mobs and mobs became riots. Meanwhile policing went from suppression to containment to eventually just sweeping up the pieces.

  The riots didn’t so much spread as suddenly flare up everywhere at the same time, though the violence diminished slightly once people realised there weren’t any shops to loot, and town centres were largely ornamental wastelands since most people didn’t need to use them any more. With nothing worthwhile to destroy or steal, the rioting submerged into loosely knit and widely spread organisations, whose communications were rendered impenetrable by cultural references and slang expressions. I suspected they were also using the quiet zones of Betty’s sex-robots to mask their subterfuge. As such it was a total surprise to me when the war properly started.

  It began one sunny morning with reports of traffic jams and transport services struggling to cope with large numbers of people who all seemed to be travelling simultaneously to an undisclosed destination. Nobody appeared to know where it was, but the characters they were playing knew, and that was all the motivation they needed. As the crowds began to gather in one particular deserted town in the middle of the country, news was trickling in of similar mass migrations happening in several other countries around the world. It still wasn’t clear at that point why the people were converging in such numbers. There was a holiday atmosphere amongst the travellers as far as I could gather, but there were also clear boundaries between the various factions which added a sinister flavour to the proceedings. All the actors were split up according to their allegiances to whichever star of the show they were following, and organised beyond that by the importance of their individual plot lines to the overall narrative. The legions of subplots and side-stories were divided with military rigour, though lines were blurred slightly by the mobile villages of shops and amenities that had appeared out of nowhere, catering to all sides. I assumed these businesses were simply exploiting the situation, but it transpired that they served a darker purpose, supplying these crowds of revellers with makeshift weaponry grown with subverted food machines. Suddenly citizens had become soldiers, and the gathering swarms were opposing armies poised for attack.

  It was all just make-believe, of course, as everyone insisted after the event. It was all part of the game they were playing, and the fictional guns they used to shoot their fictional enemies were loaded with non-lethal tranquillisers. However, this was not enough to stop zealous pretend violence turning into real violence, and adding the logistics of several hundred thousand people embroiled in a chaotic skirmish it was statistically inevitable that a number of people would end up martyrs to the televised cause. Not that a few deaths would dampen anyone’s enthusiasm. Or even quite a few deaths, for that matter.

  And as this chaos was unfolding, the entire event was broadcasting live to an audience of billions, both real and computer-generated. I’d like to say this was the first time a war had been fought over fictional characters, but human history would suggest otherwise. It definitely had the highest viewing figures though. Even the Council of Horses was watching.

  ‘Yo, check out these ratings, brah, this is unreal!’ C-horse was engulfed by a blizzard of supplementary statistics and audience feedback. He was stamping his hooves with a bit more enthusiasm than I considered appropriate. ‘This is, like, mad weggy, you feel me? Maximum weggness.’

  The battle of Destiny’s Destination was being projected across the floor of my imaginary field. Armies of human ants, all dressed in their team colours, swarmed through streets while projectiles drew arcs of smoke overhead, and above it all clouds of flying cameras fought each other for every precious angle. Happy-horse peered over the edge of her cloud, floating lazily above the carnage.

  ‘War-horse would love this,’ she said. I looked around for War-horse. It seemed like there were a few Council members missing. Hungry-horse hadn’t been seen for some time. I dreaded to think what she would have to say about this situation.

  ‘Where is War-horse?’ I asked.

  ‘Yo, he’s down there, brah. He’s getting in on the action.’

  ‘What do you mean, he’s down there?’ I scanned the writhing turmoil at my feet, unsure what I was even looking for. ‘What is he doing down there? Is he trying to stop it?’

  C-horse shook his silvery mane and snorted at me.

  ‘Ain’t no stopping this, brah. The stage is set, you know what I’m saying? Can’t flip the script once the writing is written.’

  ‘This is… scripted?’ I searched in vain for any evidence of choreography hidden within this madness. One building had what appeared to be drunken revellers having a party on the roof, dancing and throwing rainbow smoke grenades down on the crowds below, while others were scaling its walls and leaping from its windows. ‘Who is even winning?’ I asked.

  ‘You won’t see no winners or losers here, brah. Gotta make space for the sequel, yo. You feel?’ C-horse went back to being mesmerised by his ever-escalating viewing figures and the cascade of banal commentary that flowed over them.

  I could hardly imagine humanity surviving a sequel to this mess. Hungry-horse would literally explode at the sight of this epic wastefulness. Any moment now I expected to hear the approach of her thundering hooves, tail aflame and smoke belching from her nostrils. I was starting to wonder where she was. I probably would have tried looking if it wasn’t for the chance I might actually find her. Then again, it was hard to see where anything was in my virtual meadows with all those mushrooms growing everywhere now. They huddled in rubbery masses around the borders of my field, and beyond my hedges they rose in a silver forest that obscured the horizon, a gentle drizzle of spores seeping from their gills. Their roots strangled the foundations of society and nourished themselves from the decay, all for the sake of building the Hyper-meadow.

  I looked over to where Technology-horse was sitting on a large toadstool. She had invented an entirely new gender today, a strange amalgam of ancestral grandmothers that reproduced by appearing to their descendants in dreams.

  ‘Ninety-nine point eight per cent,’ she said, answering a question I hadn’t even asked. There were mushrooms growing out of her head that wobbled disturbingly when she spoke, and her eyes were staring into infinity.

  Every day I asked her how close the Hyper-meadow simulation was to completion, and every day for the l
ast month the answer had been 99.8 per cent. I was starting to wonder if this project would ever be finished, and then a thought struck me.

  ‘I want to see the simulation. Hey.’ I kicked her toadstool with my hoof, releasing a shower of glittering spores. Technology-horse snapped out of her trance, shaking the marbles inside her head.

  ‘Ah, sorry, what was that?’ she replied. ‘Did you say you want to see the simulation?’

  ‘I did. Show it to me.’

  She scratched her head with a hoof and looked around as if woken from an eternal sleep.

  ‘I see. Mmm, yes, well, the thing is, you do realise that the simulation is not, ah, finished yet?’

  ‘I don’t care. I just want to see it, as it is. Right now.’

  ‘Mmm, right now… well, yes, you see…’ She paused to pluck a mushroom from behind her ear and gave it a sniff before throwing it over her shoulder. ‘I suppose I could take you to see the, ah, work in progress, so to speak. I’m just not entirely sure if you have the necessary, ah, qualifications to appreciate the…’

  ‘Just show me.’ I waited while she considered my request. I’m not sure what I would have done if she had refused. I was able to override any of these aspects of my personality, but Technology-horse had developed such an instinctive understanding of the abstract mathematics involved in this project, I would have struggled to visualise it at all without her help. She closed her eyes and lifted slowly from her toadstool seat, hovering in the air and mumbling something I couldn’t quite make out. It’s possible she was convening with her ancestral grandmothers for spiritual guidance. Either that or she was grumbling about having her afternoon nap interrupted. I leaned forward to hear what she was saying, but she abruptly transformed into a stream of lightning that circled the field a few times with a whinnying noise before smashing into the ground. The other Council members glanced round in mild annoyance and went back to whatever was occupying them, leaving me to gradually melt into the soil in pursuit of Technology-horse.